Botswana Chapter Digital Literacy Program Seeks to Empower Rural Village Development Committee Leaders

The newly charted ISOC Botswana Chapter is set to spread the Internet Society mandate in Botswana through engagement with relevant stakeholders. The diverse team of technical, communications, and policy practitioners will venture into impact initiatives to complement the Internet Society mission and mandate. As a Beyond the Net 2018 beneficiary, the local chapter is embarking on a project titled: “Internet for Development of Rural Botswana: Empowering Village Development Committees Through Use of the Internet.”

The Village Development Committees (VDCs) are the custodians of community development initiatives. VDCs operate on values of engagement, consultation, and participation and this project hopes to contribute in enhancing these values using the Internet. The digital literacy trainings program is designed to target VDCs leaders in 4 remote regions with the aim of empowering these village leaders with digital tools and resources. VDC Tech Champions will be identified and will be responsible for continued facilitation of the digital literacy training program.  To facilitate future support, ISOC Botswana will donate laptops and wireless Internet modems to ensure resources and access.

Beyond the trainings, this project will collect impact stories of the anticipated improvements in VDCs’ operations, relating to digital access and engagement. The hope Continue reading

Introducing the Virtual Cloud Network Readiness Assessment

Is your network ready for applications, automation, multi-cloud, containers and more? Here’s a truth bomb for you: the network that got us here today is not sufficient for tomorrow. Sorry to be sardonic, but here are the facts: today, new business models, cloud adoption, and the explosion of connected devices are now must-haves for organizations that are prioritizing digital transformation initiatives. But legacy network approaches rooted in hardware just don’t cut it anymore; technology is rapidly shifting and improving at a rate that is undeniably fast. To keep up, modern networks must be able to support operations across data centers, multiple clouds, branch locations, and edge devices while prioritizing security for the ever-growing amount of application data that flows from every point within a network.

Despite these shifts and needs, many organizations do not have a unified approach to management, automation, and security. Do you know if your network does? Find out how software-first networking can transform your business.

Virtual Cloud Network Readiness Assessment

The Virtual Cloud Network Readiness Assessment can help you assess the current state of your network and security – for free.  By answering a few questions in this 10-minute survey, you’ll get a personalized report that Continue reading

Nominations Now Open for 2019 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board of Directors

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) is the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains. If you or someone you know has the interest and qualifications to help guide the future of PIR, the Internet Society invites you to consider a seat on the PIR Board of Directors.

In 2019 there are three positions opening on the PIR Board. These three directors will serve a 3-year term that begins mid-year 2019 and expires mid-year 2022. Prior board experience is preferred. All directors must be able to read and understand a balance sheet, as well as read and communicate effectively in the English language.

More information about the position, the qualifications, and a link to the nomination form can be found at:
https://www.internetsociety.org/pir/call-for-nominations/

The deadline for nominations is 15:00 UTC on February 4, 2019.

The post Nominations Now Open for 2019 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board of Directors appeared first on Internet Society.

The Week in Internet News: Huge Data Breach at Hotel Chain

Millions of records stolen: Marriott International, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, has reported a data breach affecting up to 500 million customers, the Washington Post reports. The breached database includes information on guests staying at Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis hotels. The 500 million records lost makes it the second largest data breach reported.

Encryption debate back yet again: U.S. deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, best known for overseeing the investigation into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, has renewed the Department of Justice’s long-term call for encryption workarounds in tech products, Wired.com reports. Addressing critics of encryption backdoors, Rosenstein said: “Just because people are quick to criticize you does not mean that you are doing the wrong thing. Take it from me.”

Countering view: Meanwhile, Robert Anderson, a former top cyber official at the FBI, said that since leaving the agency and working on cybersecurity issues, he now understands why tech companies would oppose government efforts to break encryption. Companies “entrusted by the clients who have given them information” have a responsibility to protect it, he said in an FCW.com story.

Someone’s watching you: Chinese Internet companies have begun to keep detailed records Continue reading

How to buy SD-WAN technology: Key questions to consider when selecting a supplier

Software-defined WAN traffic is exploding, and so is the number of technology providers competing for enterprise SD-WAN customers. Here are some key issues to consider as IT pros investigate SD-WAN deployment options and weigh the importance of features such as application prioritization, multicloud support and integrated network security.SD-WAN technologies and services are designed to combine multiple physical WAN links into one logical network and provide traffic prioritization to accelerate application performance. Using network abstraction, SD-WAN improves the economics of branch connectivity by enabling organizations to leverage inexpensive circuits, such as the Internet, to address growing bandwidth requirements. SD-WAN is relatively easy to deploy and manage as it maps new services – application prioritization, security, management – on top of existing physical networks.To read this article in full, please click here

How to buy SD-WAN technology: Key questions to consider when selecting a supplier

Software-defined WAN traffic is exploding, and so is the number of technology providers competing for enterprise SD-WAN customers. Here are some key issues to consider as IT pros investigate SD-WAN deployment options and weigh the importance of features such as application prioritization, multicloud support and integrated network security.SD-WAN technologies and services are designed to combine multiple physical WAN links into one logical network and provide traffic prioritization to accelerate application performance. Using network abstraction, SD-WAN improves the economics of branch connectivity by enabling organizations to leverage inexpensive circuits, such as the Internet, to address growing bandwidth requirements. SD-WAN is relatively easy to deploy and manage as it maps new services – application prioritization, security, management – on top of existing physical networks.To read this article in full, please click here

IDC: Expect 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025

IDC has released a report on the ever-growing datasphere, what it calls the collective world’s data, and just like the recent Cisco study, the numbers are staggering. IDC predicts that the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes this year to a 175ZB by 2025, for a compounded annual growth rate of 61 percent.The 175ZB figure represents a 9 percent increase over last year’s prediction of data growth by 2025. IDC's “Data Age 2025” whitepaper, sponsored by Seagate, says the datasphere has three locations. First is the core, which includes traditional and cloud data centers, second is the edge, which includes things like cell towers and branch offices, and third is endpoints, which include PCs, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.To read this article in full, please click here

IDC: Expect 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025

IDC has released a report on the ever-growing datasphere, what it calls the collective world’s data, and just like the recent Cisco study, the numbers are staggering. IDC predicts that the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes this year to a 175ZB by 2025, for a compounded annual growth rate of 61 percent.The 175ZB figure represents a 9 percent increase over last year’s prediction of data growth by 2025. IDC's “Data Age 2025” whitepaper, sponsored by Seagate, says the datasphere has three locations. First is the core, which includes traditional and cloud data centers, second is the edge, which includes things like cell towers and branch offices, and third is endpoints, which include PCs, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.To read this article in full, please click here

Why I’m telling network engineers to learn Python

Why I'm telling network engineers to learn Python

During a wet autumnal walk, I was explaining to my girlfriend about my recent presentations. I've been doing my 'Getting Started with Python' talk at Aruba Airheads meet-ups. I recorded an early version of it, see below. One point I mentioned is that the reaction is always mixed. When I ask who is learning Python, about 5% of each audience put their hands up. Regularly people object to the idea of network engineers learning Python. The arguments are usually along the lines of 'network engineers already have enough to learn'.
The conversation continued as we walked through sodden leaves and we discussed why, if the other speakers were doing talks that the crowds want to hear, like product updates, I'm burdened with a subject the audience are less enthusiastic about. The assumption being that I was assigned this topic. My response: "Oh no, I choose to do this." The next question was, of course, "Why?"

My Why

There's something of the two-edged sword in the word 'why'. It can be used to undermine, casting doubt about the veracity of an argument, cutting through the rhetoric and leaving those with ill-reasoned ideas to flounder and stutter a response. But Continue reading

Securify: practical security analysis of smart contracts

Securify: practical security analysis of smart contracts Tsankov et al., CCS’18

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. When we’re talking about securing smart contracts, we need all the help we can get! Bugs can cost millions of dollars. Securify uses a set of expert heuristics (patterns) to help identify issues in smart contracts. It’s available at https://securify.ch, has analysed over 18K uploaded contracts, and is used by security auditors as part of their arsenal.

The increased adoption of smart contracts demands strong security guarantees. Unfortunately, it is challenging to create smart contracts that are free of security bugs. As a consequence, critical vulnerabilities in smart contracts are discovered and exploited every few months. In turn, these exploits have led to losses reaching millions worth of USD in the past few years…. Despite their potential, repeated security concerns have shaken the trust in handling billions of USD by smart contracts.

Too right! We’ve examined some of the challenges involved in creating correct smart contracts in previous editions of The Morning Paper, as well as tools such as Zeus that help with verification.

It’s not a solvable problem in the general case (i.e., ‘perfect’ Continue reading

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